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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 21st, 2023

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  • You make a compelling point, for sure. There are definitely features that fall into that category (eg page transitions), there are a lot of other things coming out these days that just make life easier.

    For example, in chrome (and in the spec) you can now animate between ‘height: [number]’ and ‘height:auto;’ just the other day, I had to write a python function to estimate the highest of a menu based on its length * the line height of the list items, so I could provide an exact height to animate to. It works, but it’s hacky and gross. It would be nice to have access to the solution.



  • You’re not wrong, but, like with critics of other “abolish such-n-such” statements, you’re missing a core part of it: replacing “such-n-such” with something better. Copyright has a few important purposes, and I don’t think anyone would want to eliminate it without covering those — and the need for creators to survive, and maybe even flourish, is chief among them.

    (Same thing with “defund the police” — the intention was to redirect that funding to crime prevention and “alternative policing” (eg send therapists to mental health emergencies instead of cops). That was arguably the biggest PR fail of the century.)

    Also, very very minor point, but as a librarian:

    content libraries

    I think “content collections” would be a better term, to preserve the free-to-share subtext of the word “library” — and “collection” has more of a hoarding context, which fits.


  • That’s true, but, obviously there’s a market share difference between those two. And the fact that it’s ALWAYS ff that lags behind, it’s not like there’s cool things that ff can do that chrome can’t.

    And, more importantly, there’s the browser I like (ff) which doesn’t do the thing, and the browsers I don’t like, which do.

    FWIW tho, i don’t think OP will actually apply to ALL chromium browsers. I’ve been using Vivaldi when I cheat on Firefox, and none of the anti-adblock changes Google’s been making have impacted Vivaldi, and I assume that pattern will continue.



  • Bill Gates has made anti-knowledge sharing his lifelong legacy, from crushing OpenGL by bribing game developers not to build in it, to pushing the US gov’t to give away COVID vaccines to poor countries rather than making the data available so they could make their own. His influence in the industry towards proprietary and closed source code is unmatched. Like, we all love the nerd jumping over the computer with the goofy smile but that dude is a piece of shit.

    My point was that if we (you!) were able to level the windows/Linux gaming playing field before he died, that would make him mad, and make me happy.


  • Most people say things like “fuck copyright” because it’s currently set up to benefit employers, large companies, and wealthy people; creators are an obstacle in copyright law. Current copyright law hinders creativity and centralizes wealth. Fuck copyright.

    If copyright law was creator-centric, there would be a lot fewer people saying “fuck copyright”.

    Personally I’d probably still be against copyright, but only if there was some other way to take care of artists, like a UBI or something.





  • Serious talk now, everyone. Jokers step aside for a moment.

    If you’re broke, and don’t mind fleecing sovcits, you can make yourself a website with made up credentials, degrees, and publications. Then, you respond to posts like that with extremely confident affirmations.

    Yes, absolutely you can. The thing is, because the original Ancient Tablet law structure was never explicitly repealed, it has been used successfully in court in the USA and Australia to have suspended licenses purged from the database (any fines you may have remaining will be eliminated as well). See federal cases US vs Leewater, US vs Washington Johnson, and US vs Phil, Gill, and Jill.

    If you don’t have the forms and such I’d be happy to help out, email me at john@veryrealdomain.com


  • My journey was Windows-> Ubuntu -> Mint -> Fedora -> Arch.

    (Infuriatingly i still use windows for gaming, but nothing else.)

    Did i mention that i use arch?

    More importantly:

    fucked up all my data with no backup.

    One time i messed up a script and accidentally copied 40,000 mp3s to the same filename. 20 years of music collecting, literally going back to Napster, all gone.

    Well, not completely gone. I’ve got everything uploaded to iBroadcast, and I’m pretty sure i can download my library. But I’m not sure i deserve to.





  • HTML is pretty straightforward so just understanding the very basic stuff is probably all you need. CSS is where html gets any challenge it might have.

    CSS is weird because it’s very “easy” so “real developers” kind of object to learning it, but the truth is, if you gave any of them a layout design, they probably couldn’t build it. There are tools like tailwind to help, but, IMO, tailwind just helps you avoid learning css’s vocabulary, but you just replace it with having to learn tailwind’s vocabulary.

    JavaScript on the other hand is a “real” programming language, though decidedly quick-n-dirtier than other languages. It lets you be a lot more sloppy. (Tbh it’s a lot more forgiving than css!). As a result, it lacks the elegance and control that “real developers” like – and, as most people’s first language, it lets newcomers get into bad habits. For these reasons, JavaScript is a bit derided – but, unlike CSS, most developers can’t avoid it.

    There are a few key ideas in JavaScript that, once you understand them, things make a lot more sense. (I won’t get into them now, since it doesn’t sound like you’re at the point where that kind of clarity would help, but, when you are, come on back here and make a post!)

    TLDR: HTML is definitely something you can just pick up along the way. JavaScript is a real language that will take a little while to feel comfortable with, and it will take a career to master. CSS will never be easy, so don’t let it hold you back.


  • Hi everyone, JP here. This person is making a reference to the Weird Al biopic, and if you haven’t seen it, you should.

    Weird Al is an incredible person and has been through so much. I had no idea what a roller coaster his life has been! I always knew he was talented but i definitely didn’t know how strong he is.

    His autobiography will go down in history as one of the most powerful and compelling and honest stories ever told. If you haven’t seen it, you really, really should.

    ITT NO SPOILERS PLS



  • Follow up question – I’m not OP but I’m another not-really-new developer (5 years professional xp) that has 0 experience working with others:

    I have trouble understanding where to go on the spectrum of “light touch” and “doing a really good job”. (Tldr) How should a contributor gauge whether to make big changes to “do it right” or to do it a little hacky just to get the job done?

    For example, I wanted to make a dark mode for a site i use, so i pulled the sites’s repo down and got into it.

    The CSS was a mess. I’ve done dark modes for a bunch of my own projects, and I basically just assign variables (–foreground-color, --background-color), and then swap their assignments by the presence or absence of a “.dark-mode” class in the body tag.

    But the site had like 30 shades of every color, like, imperceptibly different shades of red or green. My guess was the person used a color picker and just eyeballed it.

    If the site was mine, I would normalize them all but there was such a range – some being more than 10-15% different from each other – so i tried to strike a balance in my normalization. I felt unsure whether this was done by someone who just doesn’t give a crap about color/CSS or if it was carefully considered color selection.

    My PR wasn’t accepted (though the devs had said in discord that i could/should submit a PR for it). I don’t mind that it wasn’t accepted, but i just don’t know why. I don’t want to accidentally step on toes or to violate dev culture norms.